Nonprofits

There are plenty of opportunities to get involved and give back with many amazing nonprofits that are addressing critical needs and the fundamental well being of the Boulder community. Learn how you can make a difference.

Attention Homes

Attention Homes operates the only youth overnight emergency shelter in Boulder County. It is a safe resource for youth in crisis providing shelter, structure, and access to crucial services so that homeless and displaced youth can become stable, independent members of our community and achieve their potential.

Their community-based programs offer teens street outreach, day drop-in services, overnight shelter, and residential care. These services provide teens psychosocial development through positive behavioral change. Our goal is to help youth in crisis become healthy, productive members of our community.

Over the past 50 years, Attention Homes has provided residential treatment and safe shelter to over 8,000 youth and young adults.

I Have A Dream Foundation

The “I Have a Dream” Foundation of Boulder County has been committed to helping children from low-income communities reach their educational and career goals for the past 26 years, with year-round after-school and summer programming and a college scholarship upon graduation from high school. Nine learning centers in Boulder, Frederick, Lafayette, and Longmont provide academic and cultural enrichment, health and wellness programs, and college and career prep, and are supported by a community of donors, volunteers, tutors, and mentors.

There With Care

There With Care’s mission is to provide a wide range of thoughtful and fundamental services to families and children during the critical phase of a medical crisis. There With Care works with hospitals, social workers, and volunteers to provide multi-faceted support to the entire family during emotionally, financially, and physically challenges with a network of services including: meals; transportation; home maintenance; baby essentials for premature babies; professional services including accounting, legal, and translation services; therapy; telephone support; and babysitting, mentoring, and tutoring for children who are patients and siblings.

EFAA

Since 1918, EFAA has been the community safety net for families who have nowhere else to turn when they can’t meet their basic needs. EFAA helps those in our community whose immediate needs for food, shelter and other basic necessities cannot be adequately met by other means, and supports their efforts toward financial stability or self-sufficiency. EFAA provides help with critical expenses, like rent, utilities, minor medical costs and transportation; family housing through the operation of 53 units of short-term and transitional housing for families in crisis; case management to link clients to community resources and empower them to work toward self-sufficiency; and strategic education in the community to increase awareness about poverty and homelessness where we live.

BCCC

Boulder County CareConnect is a 44-year-old nonprofit that provides volunteer-powered safety net services for seniors and adults with disabilities to help them stay safe and live more independently.
Here in Boulder County, we’ve always been supportive of a caring, vibrant and healthy community. Our citizens work hard to make this a great place to live for all ages. Boulder County CareConnect helping to ensure that seniors and adults with disabilities can live with dignity and thrive as long as possible.

Community Foundation Boulder County

For 25 years, the Community Foundation Boulder County has been a community catalyst, responding to immediate needs and anticipating future challenges. Through informed decision-making, the Community Foundation Boulder County inspires ideas, ignites action and mobilizes diverse resources to improve the quality of life for everyone in Boulder County. Since its inception in 1991, the Community Foundation Boulder County has granted $75M to nonprofit organizations in Boulder County and beyond – $7.6M in 2016.

The Community Foundation has a long list of impactful programs and initiatives to improve the quality of life for all Boulder County residents. But they have not done this on their own. With a strong belief that ‘we accomplish more together than alone,’ the foundation collaborates with donors, community partners and nonprofits.

Boulder Food Rescue

One in six people experiences food insecurity in Boulder County and yet approximately 40 percent of food in the county goes to waste. Boulder Food Rescue, founded by five friends at CU-Boulder, developed a grassroots and creative solution to address this problem. Boulder Food Rescue redistributes perishable fresh produce and prepared foods from grocery stores and restaurants by a team of hundreds of volunteers on bikes. They take the food to those suffering from hunger at low-income housing sites, senior homes, homeless shelters, food pantries, preschools, and daycare centers. Partnering with 42 nonprofit and community organizations across Boulder, Boulder Food Rescue’s overarching goal is to create a more just and less wasteful food system.

YMCA of Boulder Valley

The YMCA of Boulder Valley creates a community that changes lives. It provides a far-reaching web of support, for every age group – regardless of ability to pay. Through more than 50 programs, the Y “strengthens community” by serving three areas, including:

Youth Development — Before- and after-school programs, youth enrichment classes and summer camps help kids discover who they are and how much they can achieve while leading healthy, productive lives.

Healthy Living — Fitness, youth sports and personal training are among the programs designed to improve health and well-being for people of all ages and to offer activities that bring families closer together.

Social Responsibility — MEND, All Stars Sports and Head Start Water Safety headline programs that serve a diverse population and people of all abilities.

Flatirons Habitat For Humanity

Serving Boulder Valley for more than two decades as part of a global, nonprofit housing organization, Flatirons Habitat for Humanity has been dedicated to eliminating substandard housing locally and worldwide through constructing, rehabilitating and preserving homes; by advocating for fair and just housing policies; and by providing training and access to resources to help families improve their shelter conditions.

Habitat for Humanity was founded on the conviction that every man, woman and child should have a simple, durable place to live in dignity and safety, and that decent shelter in decent communities should be a matter of conscience and action for all.

Imagine! Foundation

By providing funds to the nonprofit Imagine!, a hub of local, state and federally funded programs for people with developmental disabilities, the Imagine! Foundation, founded in 2000, offers extensive support for nearly 3,500 people with developmental disabilities (and their families), in Boulder and Broomfield Counties.

Imagine! Foundation also supports education as a crucial way of helping the community to better understand the role people with developmental disabilities play in society, what their needs are, the challenges faced by their families, and the support Imagine! provides.

Just Go Harder Foundation

Just Go Harder Foundation (JGHF), a nonprofit founded by retired pro-cyclist and former Olympic Team member, Timmy Duggan, along with fellow cyclist Ian Macgregor, provides scholarships to help local kids participate in cycling and skiing activities who otherwise would not be able to do so. The primary goal of JGHF is to create a permanent legacy scholarship for the Eldora Mountain Ski Club and Singletrack Mountain Bike Adventures. EMSC and SMBA, collectively known as Lake Eldora Racing Team, are the programs that Timmy Duggan and Ian MacGregor began their athletic careers and gave them the skills for success in sport and in life.

A permanent scholarship offsetting program fees will enable deserving kids to have the opportunity to ride and ski with the great coaches and mentors in these programs, shaping lives through sport for years to come. In addition to aiding this program, the Just Go Harder Foundation aspires to make significant contributions to other grassroots skiing and cycling organizations in the Boulder Valley.

Commuting Solutions

Commuting Solutions is dedicated to delivering innovative transportation options that connect commuters to their workplaces, businesses to their employees, and residents to their communities. Through advocacy for infrastructure and transportation improvements, partnerships and education, we create progressive, flexible transportation solutions.

We are a service organization that advocates on behalf of our members for multi-modal improvements and the funding needed to implement them. Equally important are the services we provide through marketing, design of service, coordination with service providers such as RTD, CDOT and local governments and travel demand management programs. We create reliable, flexible, win/win solutions for all commuters.

Dairy Arts Center

The Dairy’s founders envisioned a community arts center where artists of all genres would create and inspire each other and the greater community. Today, this dream of shared art making is a thriving reality. The Dairy’s 42,000 square foot facility houses disciplines ranging from visual arts, theater, and film to dance and music.

A professional environment complete with art galleries, performance venues, teaching studios, offices, rehearsal spaces, dance studios, and a 60-seat art-house cinema, it is Boulder’s largest multi-disciplinary arts center. The Dairy’s audience spans all ages, backgrounds and ability levels,from young student to seasoned performer and from first-time to seasoned theatergoers.

Ramble on Pearl

Ramble on Pearl is a nonprofit clothing and accessories boutique that provides on-the-job skills training and job placement services to adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, including Autism Spectrum Disorder and Down’s Syndrome. Founded by couple Connie and Andy Minden, whose daughter has an IDD and who had difficulty finding independent employment, the boutique sells merchandise at below-retail prices and all revenues support their program.

“85% of the IDD population are unemployed and those who are employed often make sub-minimum wages due to specific exemptions in state law,” says Andy Minden. “We want to help people with IDD become more self-sufficient and be a part of the community at large.”

Share a Gift

Each year during the holidays for the past 44 years, Share-A-Gift has gathered and distributed a bounty of donated bikes, toys, books, and clothing, helping 650 underprivileged local families give presents to their kids.

Share–A–Gift collects toys at sites around the city of Boulder and in areas of eastern Boulder County starting Thanksgiving week through the middle of December. Volunteers set up and organize a “Toy Shop” in a donated warehouse space where toys are distributed to families-in-need. On a single day, all eligible parents are able to come and “shop” – selecting toys for their children with the help of hundreds of volunteer assistants.